Embedded // Monique Fillion
Exhibition Dates: June 9 – July 14, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 2023 @ 5 – 8 pm
Artist talk: Saturday June 10, 2023 @ 1pm
ASL interpretation will be provided and live captions will be enabled.
This talk is free to attend and open to the public.
Exhibition Text by Vi Houssin
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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Embedded, a solo exhibition by Monique Fillion (MB).
Embedded is an exhibition of digital photos and folded paper structures that suggests an alternative experience of the ordinary. Fillion’s work is metaphorical, abstract, and meditative as it guides us below the surface of our relationships with the places and objects that surround us. Images are filled with chimerical beings and archetypes that touch upon sub-conscious ideas, offering an invitation to become immersed in looking and receptive to the pleasures of free association. The shadows and shifts found in her work uncover the beautiful, the fragile and the ominous, redefining our sense of reality.
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Artist Statement
In this new body of work, Fillion works to disrupt our relationship with the familiar and the mundane by revealing the intrinsic vitality of inanimate objects. Excavating deeply into the commonplace object of tissue gift wrapping paper to uncover what lies hidden below, Embedded delves into unexpected tunnels of thoughts and experiences.
Fillion’s approach is explorative and playful in nature. The creative process for this body of work began through photographing handmade tissue paper structures, hung in front of a window. Through layering images of the paper and sculpting the shapes with a light brush in Photoshop, Fillion creates surreal compositions that reveal encrusted forms of insects, winged creatures, and other whimsical beasts.
Composed of two-dimensional photographs, organic in nature and often possessing a sculptural quality, Fillion’s pieces become constructions of evocative forms filled with ambiguity and introspection suggesting the idea of transformation. Shapes embedded in the images evoke the universal in the form of symbols and ideas that inhabit us, often without our knowledge, buried by everyday life. These forms reveal some of the biases and peculiarities of one’s own thoughts and experiences, and invite us to question our habitual way of perceiving the world.
Subtle photographs embedded in the origami paper remind the viewer that the subject of the images is an innocuous, commonplace object. Tunneling back and forth between the extraordinary and the ordinary, the surreal and the concrete, Embedded digs into the boundary between the conscious and the subconscious.
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Artist Bio
Monique Fillion is a francophone visual artist who lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and currently works with digital photography and video, as well as acrylic paint on canvas. Her work focusses on themes of transformation, diversity, and the delicate balance essential to all relationships. She is a member of a collective of eight Manitoba artists called The Winnipeg Pantsuit Collective. Her work has been exhibited in New York, New York and in several galleries in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba and three of her paintings are in public collections.
Monique can be found online at moniquefillion.com and on Instagram @moniquefillion
